As for Bangkok, the Thai king from long ago, Rama I, was able to change the capital to this place.

国王が この 地の すばらしさを 歌いあげ、 その ことばが そのまま みやこの 名前と なったのです。

The king sang of the splendor of this place and so those words became the name of the capital.

The reason why I thought it wasn’t talking about the king singing magnificently was because I am translating この 地の すばらしさを as more like “the splendor of this place”. 地のすばらしさ = lit. place’s splendor/magnificence?

Can anyone help explain the lack of か at the end of this てしょう? I’m not too sure either…

~でしょう is the conjecture form of です. On its own, it means “it seems” or “probably”. It can take か at the end if you’re asking for agreement or confirmation, but this can also be dropped if it’s obvious from tone of voice that you’re asking a question. With no か at the end, you can also assume there’s just a conjecture statement being made.

There’s no か at the end because the book isn’t looking for your agreement or answer on where the Thai capital is–it’s about to tell you. But before it tells you, it’s making a conjecture statement about where this capital might be, in contrast to other capitals you already know about.

In English, since this is an instructional book, the sense would be “The capital of England is London, in France it’s Paris, in China it’s Beijing, you see. So, let’s find out where the capital of Thailand is.”

When I looked at this sentence, something at the end of the sentence seemed weird to me and I couldn’t quite figure it out at first then I thought the verb なる(become) is usually written with に in front of it so it looks like になる. So why a と in front of なる？

So I looked up the word となる in Jisho and it means the same thing as になる. So if it means the same thing then why did the writer choose となるinstead?

I try to pick what I think makes the most sense given the context of the other sentences I have. I don’t really have enough knowledge of the language yet to do it any other way and without the kanji it makes it much harder, especially when there are multiple options listed on Jisho.

EDIT, here’s P49

タイの 人たちに とっても あまりに 長いため、バンコクの ことを いちばん はじめだけ とって 「クルンテープ」 と よびます。

The Thai people, because of this very excessively long name, began to mostly use Bangkok’s alternative name, called “Krung Thep”.